St. Paul's Recent Snow Emergency Draws Mixed Reviews

Updated: 12/19/2013 7:08 AM KSTP.com
By: Josh Rosenthal

Stephan Plamback loves the weather. It means he can finally shovel his whole driveway, and it gives the city a chance to do their part too.

“Glad the city of St. Paul got out here and did some plowing to get up a lot of this stuff, and now if we can get rid of most of this stuff and prevent it from going to ice, that would be great,” he said.

City engineers say St. Paul’s main roads are looking good, thanks in large part to the unexpected snow emergency that was declared Tuesday morning. Plows are still working on residential streets and will continue to do so throughout Wednesday night.

Of course, you can’t please everybody.

As Hugo Garcia explained, “I just wake up and try to go to work and there is no truck outside.”

We spotted Garcia standing in line at the St. Paul impound lot waiting to get his towed car back. The city says as of 6:30 a.m. Wednesday, 565 cars had been towed and 1,700 ticketed. That’s about average for a snow emergency, but Garcia says he didn’t know the emergency had been declared.

“They take my truck last night for no reason,” he said. “They don’t even put a warning about the snow.”

St. Paul officials say plows will head out again Thursday morning, if necessary, to take care of any problem areas out on the roads.